Crews put in long weekend hours to restore power to West Virginia AEP customers – WV MetroNews

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Of the 52,000 Appalachian Power customers who lost power after the storms from Friday evening, around 38,000 of them are in West Virginia.

As of 11:30 a.m. Sunday, there are around 9,600 customers without service in West Virginia, mainly in the Charleston and Huntington areas, who were some of the cities hit the hardest. Wissing said the mark of 38,000 West Virginia customers without power was the peak hit Friday evening after the major storms had rolled through.

AEP Spokesperson Karen Wissing said there are more than 2,000 workers from six different states helping to restore power to their customers across their service territory.

“We got 700 line personnel coming to the Charleston area to help us restore power,” Wissing said Sunday. “They’re working 16 hour shifts.”

Wissing said they’re making sure all the workers are staying hydrated during those shifts as high temperatures and humidity continue to play a factor on residents and workers in the state.

Crews had to tend to plenty of downed trees and power lines, and damage to structures, with some of the major instances of structural damage occurring in Logan County where the elementary school and the Logan Regional Medical Center suffered damage.

Wissing said they know of at least 43 poles that need to be replaced, which she said on average takes around four to five hours to replace one pole.

“We have found over 230 spans of wire down from the storms on Friday,” said Wissing. “And when I say spans of wire, that could be 150 feet up to 2,500 feet long.”

All downed lines should be considered dangerous and those who come across a downed line, Wissing says to treat as “energized.”

“You never know if it is or not so keep yourself and others away,” she said.

According to Wissing, AEP expects to have power to all of their West Virginia customers restored or over 95% of it restored by Sunday evening, July 30.

Wissing also said if customers haven’t reported an outage already, they should do so by visiting their website at www.appalachianpower.com or through their mobile app.

If you encounter a fallen wire, don’t touch it, and call 911 and Appalachian Power at 1-800-956-4237.